Not long ago, there was a school of thought that JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings was unfilmable. It was too long, naysayers said, and required the viewer to be au fait with too much complex Middle Earth history to work as a linear narrative. Even the author himself called it "a book very unsuitable for dramatic or semi-dramatic representation".

Today such a view seems laughable. Now that Peter Jackson has transformed Lord of the Rings into the most successful fantasy movie trilogy of all time, Hollywood seems willing to stray into the sort of territory that frightens the life out of many readers.

You can imagine the genius thinking behind this plan: "Emmerich has done 'sci-fi' before, right? His films always do well at the box office. Maybe he can even get Will Smith involved."

The problem, of course, is that Foundation, generally considered the premier science fiction work of all time, is a series which, in terms of form and epic scale, makes Lord of the Rings look like Little Red Riding Hood. The initial trilogy alone plays out over a period of several hundred years, focusing on a vast number of different characters and eras. Even the first novel, Foundation, is actually a series of five short stories, each of which begins at least a couple of decades after the last.

The other issue is that Foundation might be just a little over-intellectual for a blockbuster movie. Its initial heroes are not lightsaber-wielding rebels trying to overthrow a bunch of evil autocrats, and there isn't a whole lot of scope for huge battles in the midst of space (although anyone who has read all seven books may well correct me here; it must happen at some point!)

Instead, Foundation's protagonists are mathematicians and historians who believe that a new science named "psychohistory" allows them to predict the future. Their aim is to reduce a possible 30,000 years of intergalactic anarchy - following the collapse of the universe's major empire - to a mere 1,000 years by setting up a foundation of knowledge to help with the rebuild. Yes, to all intents and purposes, Foundation's heroes are librarians.

There is also another important relation between The Lord of the Rings and Foundation. Jackson, whose own tinkerings with The Hobbit may yet diminish his glowing reputation among Tolkienistas, was a huge fan of the epic fantasy and had spent years trying to bring it to the big screen. He knew all about the potential pitfalls because the project was his life's work. Emmerich on the other hand is a hack whose films rely on the big bang theory for success. Foundation requires a conscientious guardian of the Asimov flame, not a hawker of visually spectacular no-brainer "event" movies.

Ideally, the sci-fi saga would work better as a TV series than a movie, but if Hollywood is going to insist on attempting a project with such an insanely panoramic canvas, it should at least do so with one eye on its franchise potential. Lord of the Rings made an awful lot of money because the first film, The Fellowship of the Ring, was spot on. The second two movies, which were already in production, would have been among the largest loss-leaders in movie history if Jackson had got it wrong. If Columbia bungles the first Foundation movie, and Emmerich's presence doesn't exactly bode well, it risks channelling the disgruntled spirit of Ralph Bakshi's aborted 1978 version of Lord of the Rings, for which funding was pulled before Frodo and co had made it halfway to Mordor.

I'm sure there are readers out there who are bigger Asimov buffs than me. What are your thoughts on this one? Is the series unfilmable? And if Emmerich is the wrong man for the job, who would you appoint?